


take my eyes to borrow

by smithens



Series: take my eyes to borrow [1]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet, Chance Meetings, Depression, Emotional Manipulation, First Meetings, Gaslighting, Identity, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Richard "Dick" Ellis, Through the Years, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:01:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26961076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens
Summary: Quirks of fate.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Series: take my eyes to borrow [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2029567
Comments: 88
Kudos: 85





	1. 1910

**Author's Note:**

> > Baby, I could praise you  
> Try to turn your head around  
> Could you take a compliment? Oh, oh, oh oh oh  
> Everything I say, you  
> Find a way to drown it out  
> Make it like an argument
>> 
>> I see you a different way  
> So take my eyes to borrow
>> 
>> Keep a window for me open  
> Open for me always  
> Please don't lock the door
> 
> — Carly Rae Jepsen, "Window" 

No way out of it and no point in lying… it was only a question, really.

"Thomas," he said, with less confidence than he'd have liked, but he'd been snuck up on in his hiding place… too busy watching people, reading the room. And weren't there a great many chapters in this one. "What's yours?"

The footman laughed, though Thomas didn't see what was so funny. "William, at present."

"At present," he repeated flatly.

"I'm a footman for the Duke of Wednesbury," _William_ explained with a grin. "We're all William… first time in London, Thomas?"

"No," Thomas lied, but he'd have to do better than that, to be convincing…

"Sorry to've been mistaken," said William cheerfully, nonchalantly. Thomas had to wonder just how deep in he was to not mind that he'd had his Christian name taken away, of all things—nobody ever kept that up outside of the bloody household they worked in, did they? What was the point in licking boots when your employer wasn't around? "It's just I wondered if you quite knew whom you were eyeing up, there."

Maybe it was different if your employer was a Duke.

Especially one so important as that one, if Thomas was remembering right. He wasn't even at the dinner, so far as he could tell, so he hadn't been first on his list to read up on… He'd have to look it up, later; Carson was still trying to catch him out making a mistake like that. Making a mistake at all, really.

He was never going to.

He'd learned his lesson.

_He's just said something, you idiot._

"Sorry?" 

Something flashed in the other man's face as Thomas stared him down, but it only lasted an instant before it changed—to a broader smile, to a glint in his eye. "I ought to speak louder," he remarked, "but then there are some things one prefers to keep under one's hat…"

Thomas willed himself not to shrink under his stare. 

He had no right being so handsome as he was… that was the only reason Thomas was still standing around, but he did have standards. No matter how this chap liked to talk and no matter what duke he waited on and no matter what his face looked like.

He had his sights set higher than another servant.

And as he followed _William's_ eye through the partition and toward the young Earl of St Albans, he understood very quickly that he was doing a bad job of hiding it.

"Don't look so shocked," William laughed. Thomas opened his mouth to snap back but nothing came out. "You're not alone, is all," he continued. "Plenty of men like us about, when the season's on… just steer clear of that one."

Somebody in the smoking room crooked his finger at just that moment, and before Thomas could come up with a defense or a retort or _anything_ the other footman had swept away, port in hand.

They didn't speak again that night, and by the same time the next year Thomas had forgotten about him.


	2. 1916

It was taking longer than it should have to get to the dressing station—or it felt like it, at least.

But then, that was always what happened when you had to drag someone so many yards to get there… _Head wound,_ Lieutenant Trainor had said. _Walking wounded._ Walking wounded his arse. You'd think after a year out here they'd have enough bloody stretchers.

Thomas gave him another hoist by the knees, pulling him up further on his back.

Stretchers didn't go very fast, neither, but it was easier to think they did when you weren't carrying one.

"It's Dick, by the way," the soldier said, "my name's Dick Ellis."

The fact that the bloke could still talk with blood gushing out of his head…

Normally he didn't _mind_ talking, he was _good_ at it, even, and it was part of the fucking job, but today it – 

Today it was one of those days where if he wasn't bitter and brash he'd end up _nervous,_ in the where's-the-nearest-loony-bin sort of way…

He was having more and more of those lately. 

"How do you do," Thomas said, sarcastic. 

It made him laugh, a choking sound.

_Almost there._

*****

"What are the odds I'll make it out of here, do you suppose?" Ellis said mildly, the way people asked about if it were going to rain, or what they'd be served for dinner. 

They'd've been zero, if he hadn't got him out of there… Now they were a bit better, but _still—_

"Low, if you don't shut up," Thomas muttered—entirely unintentionally, and then he balked.

But Ellis laughed. It turned into a coughing fit. Thomas set his eyes at his mouth and silently hoped for _no blood._ He'd been hit hard enough, going by the rest of the blokes who'd been in the shellhole…

Just bodies, by the time they showed up.

Lucky for both of them the hoping paid off.

If his ribs were broken (and surely they were) they at least were probably still in the right places.

"Oh, I like you, Corporal," said Ellis after it passed, hoarse, his head falling back; he closed his eyes. "I like you… Barrow, was it?"

Usually it was so easy to tell them what they wanted to hear, easy to hold a hand and listen to them chat (and whinge and sob) about their girls and their mothers, but this was _difficult_ and he didn't know why.

"Barrow, yes." And for whatever reason, he didn't have to think hard about what he said next. "My Christian name's Thomas."

" _Thomas_ Barrow."

"Yeah," Thomas said. "I've got to change the dressing on your head now."

"Hm."

"So you probably _should_ stop talking."

"Hurts too much."

He said it so quick Thomas nearly missed it.

"Sorry?"

"Prefer to talk." Even if it was a monumental task. "Or at least to listen. Takes my mind off of it."

"I might have more morphine…"

Not that he should use on somebody twice, though.

Ellis shook his head, then winced and grimaced at the same time, his body momentarily seeming to shrivel. He had to have been a few inches taller than Thomas was but on the cot he looked tiny somehow. "Just be quick, if you would."

"I've been told I'm very efficient," Thomas said. 

It landed like a joke, though it wasn't.

*

"I'm from there," Thomas told him. "Or, er, I worked there, at least."

"Born and bred Yorkshire, myself."

"I hadn't noticed."

"So I ought to like the Brontës better," Ellis went on, a hint of a smile at his lips at the sarcasm, "but I just can't stand all the gloom."

"You might like the other one," Thomas said. "The other sister, I mean. Anne. Hers were…" (not nearly as interesting) "...well, I suppose the moral was better, if you're that kind of bloke."

"The _moral_ was better," he said, as though impressed. "I don't know that I am that kind, no." 

"But if you prefer a happy story I haven't got any off the top of my head for you."

He wasn't one for telling stories at all, but himself-around-wounded-soldiers was different from himself-around-everybody-else. He'd do his best, at least.

"What did you like when you were young?" asked Ellis. Even pale and weak-voiced there was something very handsome about him when he asked questions like that.

Thomas felt his cheeks colour. He didn't know if it was because of _that_ or the question. "My mother read us fairy tales, mostly."

"And once you were older?"

"How do you mean?"

"Once you could do it on your own."

"Still not happy ones."

"None at all?" he pressed, eyes scrutinizing.

And Thomas was saved (well, that was one way of putting it) by Lieutenant Branwell calling him over to another tent. 

He didn't know if he imagined the way Ellis had touched his wrist as he stood up to leave.

*

They kept him around at the post, and he kept finding himself at Ellis's bedside.

And sticking his foot in things.

He'd wondered, earlier, what it would take to make him speechless; now that he'd found out he didn't feel very nice about it.

He'd just about made up his mind to go check on somebody else until Ellis said, turning his head back toward him, speaking so quietly that Thomas had to lean forward, "he's on leave." He paused. Took a shaky breath. Coughed. _Watch his mouth,_ Thomas reminded himself, and though the fit sounded bad there was nothing worrying at his lips by the end of it. "Back in England. Didn't take me with him."

"He bloody should have."

What was the point of being a soldier-servant if you got left behind when the captain or lieutenant-colonel or whoever had some time to himself? When Major Irving had asked him to be his batman that had been half the appeal, he'd said, is you'll get to leave here more often, won't have to spend so much time lugging nearly-dead weight around… but he couldn't do it, himself. Couldn't go back to that.

And given how it left Ellis—left behind and bloodied up and on a train back to Blighty as soon as they could find one—he didn't suppose he'd made a bad choice after all.

Thomas was jealous of the ones going back and he knew it, but he also knew he liked having an intact head and unbroken ribs... something this one couldn't say for himself, at the moment.

"We got into a spot of trouble, actually," he replied. His fingers twitched. "Don't know if I'd much like being there." He paused. "With him, rather. God knows I'd rather be back home than anywhere else."

Not alone there…

"You got into a spot of trouble with your commanding officer?"

"I may have done."

It was spoken like it ought to have been a joke, but Ellis wasn't smiling anymore. "Queer, isn't it, being in service," he murmured. He really was talkative. "The bonds you form… things aren't so clear-cut out here as they were before, are they?"

Had he told him he was in service, _before_?

"How do you mean?"

"I think you know, Corporal," he said. 

"I don't," Thomas told him. 

But he knew enough in the moment to know that he was lying.

*

"If you thought you might die, " Ellis said, thoughtful, slow. Choosing his words before he spoke them—Thomas had never actually learned how to properly do that, had he? "Well, if you thought you might die, and you weren't exactly in full possession of your faculties—what might you do?"

"At this point I don't think you will," Thomas said slowly. "Not if you're…"

Talking, smiling, moving his limbs.

Even if he wasn't being as loud, now.

Even if he wasn't moving as much.

"Ah, but you can't say that before I'm properly in hospital, can you," he returned. He _was_ smiling, though, for some reason. Even at his eyes. Thomas couldn't understand it. "Plenty of blokes are fine til they board the train, and then by the time they're back to Blighty they've had sepsis set in."

And then they'd die. It was true, of course… no matter how much neither of them wanted it to be.

"It happened to my brother," Ellis added. "Last year. Out of Gallipoli."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, Mum got a field postcard and then..." He shut his eyes. "Yeah."

"Gallipoli was–"

"Different, everyone likes to say," Ellis said, a twitch at his lips, eyes still closed, "but I was there, too, actually, and let me tell you, this is about as much of a bloodbath… but what would you do?" he pressed. "Say you'd done something worthy of confessing, perhaps, or," but Thomas interrupted—

"I'm Catholic, everything I've done's worth confessing."

He stopped short, tilting his head up on the pillow—and then wincing. "You're Catholic, are you?" he said, clearly interested in the fact, but this wasn't something he wanted to talk about, exactly. He shouldn't have said so.

"Supposed to be."

"Then you'll know how I feel."

"How's that?"

"Guilty."

Well, this was no longer his job… "I'll fetch a padre." 

If he could find one.

He stood.

"We've met before, is the thing, you and I." 

_One of us has gone mad, and I don't think it's me._

"If I told you," Ellis continued, tone still very grave, but his face calm, calmer than it had been at all in the day, "that before all this I worked in the Royal Household… would that ring a bell?"


	3. 1925

_August 13, 1925_

_Dear Mr Ellis,_

_I write to enquire as to if you are aware of any households in Yorkshire presently seeking to fill a position for butler, under-butler or valet. I know you have some contacts up here so I thought I might ask. Please forgive me for doing so out of the blue. I am asking for myself, and I can assure that I will be able to furnish a commending character. I have already been given informal notice and can start as soon as need be. I am willing to compromise on wages but not on duties. I've humbled myself but not so much as that._

_Any additional advice you can provide on this subject will be greatly appreciated. I did speak with an agency but nothing came of it so anything you are aware of I should like to know about if you have the time._

_Thank you._

_Yours faithfully,_

_Mr Thomas Barrow_

*

_1 st October 1925_

_Dear Mr Barrow,_

_I must apologise for the delay in my writing—your letter came at an inconvenient time as I was travelling with the R.H. from the 12th of August to the 24th of September. If you are still in search of employment, I've spent the last week asking around and am aware of the following:_

_\- Bellinger residence, Malton (near Marishes), under stewardship of Mr U. Carey, seeking a valet for the young gentleman. New money, no title. They're committed to the old ways (again, new money) but the wife is American so that means something different, my source informs me. Then you may be accustomed to that?_   
_\- Kirkham House, York, under stewardship of Mr W. Hendrick, seeking an under-butler. Large house, older set. No children so stability is uncertain but beyond that I don't hear much either way about the Viscount so I reckon it's a safe choice._   
_\- Misselthwaite Manor, near Danby, housekeeper Mrs M. Sowerby, seeking a valet. I can't recommend the people out there enough but I reckon it takes a special sort of man to live so far removed from the rest of the world. But then despite all the time I spent on the Moors as a lad I can't stand them—you may feel differently?_   
_\- Welburn residence, York (near Kirbymoorside), housekeeper Mrs A.E. Young, seeking a household steward. The position's been vacant for about a month now. I heard tell they want a former butler but you ought to give it a go. Beggars can't be choosers. You're a competent man in service and we're fewer and fewer these days._

_You didn't mention compromising on locale, so here's a handful more—_

_In Lancashire:_

_\- Barrow Hall, Lancaster, housekeeper Mrs D. Wheeler, seeking a butler. Position vacant. Name gave me a chuckle._   
_\- Cowan Castle, Ribble Valley, housekeeper Mrs F. Madden, seeking a steward._   
_\- Mornington residence, Carnforth, seeking a valet._

_In Westmorland, Cumbria etc:_

_\- Garsdale Castle, under stewardship of Mr Y. Henley, seeking an under butler._   
_\- Elton residence, Carlisle, seeking one man to be both butler & valet._   
_\- Stockbridge residence, Ilderton, housekeeper Mrs L. Vernon, seeking a valet and chauffeur. Same story as above._

_The following positions in Yorkshire appear to remain unfilled after several consecutive months of vacancy & so I reckon they're growing desperate, but I can't in good conscience recommend them for reasons too delicate to describe in a letter: _

_\- Rothley Manor, Ripon, under stewardship of Mr W. Moore, seeking an under-butler_   
_\- Trentham Priory, of Thirsk, formerly under stewardship of Mr P. Oliver, housekeeper Mrs J. Ellis (no relation), seeking a valet and attendant for Lord Trentham_

_I'd advise you to avoid the staff of the former and the principals of the latter. I'm well acquainted with the man Moore is looking to replace, and I urge you to keep a wide berth from Rothley and all persons associated with it, the aforementioned especially. On the other hand Oliver is a friend of mine, retired or I'd tell you where he's at now, & Mrs E is a lovely woman who will be for her own sake departing soon, I gather. Myself I wouldn't want to get within spitting distance of the Earl if that tells you anything. I reckon the job won't last more than a few years besides—he's getting on. _

_Keep in touch? I've neither seen nor heard from you since you were up in London a year ago. You've been on my mind since then. I beg you forgive my immodesty in saying so but upon our last meeting I found myself concerned for your welfare. Perhaps it is no business of mine but I should like to know you're in good health. If my memory serves you were under the care of a specialist?_

_Right—you know how to reach me if you need anything more. I'll do my best for you where I can but you know as well as I the job is a busy one. Thanks for bearing with me._

_I am,_

_Yours sincerely,_

_and wishing you very well,_

_Dick Ellis_

*

_October 9, 1925_

_Dear Mr Ellis,_

_Thank you for your reply. I've found a post as butler in a respectable household and am no longer in search of employ._

_Yours faithfully,_

_Mr Thomas Barrow_


	4. 1924

"Thomas?"

So it was him, and so he had been followed out. 

"Mr Ellis."

The man just couldn't take a bloody hint.

Inside he'd looked happy to see him for only a moment before getting a look on his face like a concerned mother.

If only he'd just been disgusted. Maybe then they wouldn't be out in an alley about to have a conversation, and Thomas could go back to his bedsit at peace with the knowledge that he'd beaten temptation and risen above his nature, or whatever it was he was meant to be doing when he came across other homosexuals.

Even if he'd come across them on purpose.

"What brings you to London?"

"Medical treatment," he said, the words raw on his tongue. For good measure he added, "I'm seeing a specialist."

He wasn't as good of a liar as Ellis—so it helped, that he wasn't _actually_ lying.

And for once it seemed as if the other man didn't have anything to say. 

Instead of quelling his nerves the smoking seemed to agitate him—it tasted wrong, and his hand still shook. The smoke sat unpleasantly in his mouth. Come to think of it he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. Or had he? It was difficult to remember. What he did remember was the feeling of salt water down his throat and bile burning him raw on the inside—

"Steady," Ellis said, and Thomas looked down and saw his hold upon his arm and felt bewildered that he was managing somehow to touch him without his feeling it. "Steady."

Thomas yanked himself from his grasp, feeling suddenly very cold and very naked. He could feel a trickle of sweat down his neck but the rest of him was nearly shivering. "I shouldn't've – I'm not supposed to be here," he stammered, even though it was none of his business. He couldn't say why, after all. Ellis, confident and capable as he was, was the last person whom Thomas would expect to understand—handsome and popular and in the best valeting job in the world, or second best at least. Perfect. It was like being in school all over again, with him, except in school the boys everybody _fawned_ over had had nothing in common with him except maybe a talent on the field, and him and Ellis were too alike for comfort, in some ways...

And boys in the schoolyard never behaved nearly so nice as Ellis did. 

The fact that he bothered with seeming nice and cordial when they both knew what he was capable of was just another reason to resent him.

Sometimes he wondered if it wasn't the only good one.

He knew jealousy when he felt it, after all.

Ellis looked over his shoulder, toward the door—open, with two men stumbling out, one's arm around the other's waist, and the din of chatter and smell of alcohol was too much even though it had to have been yards away. "None of us are," he said gently, turning back toward him, looking him in the eye.

"Least of all you," Thomas sniped, but it rolled off of him like water on a duck's back. He drew himself up to his full height (Thomas hadn't even realised he'd been leaning down) and tilted his head at him, condescending, eyebrows raised. Thomas wanted to slug him.

"You don't think much of my advice until you can throw it back at me, do you?"

"You're lucky my aim isn't better."

"Is that right," returned Ellis, entirely unaffected. "I've always figured you had a very good aim, actually." He paused. Thomas stared at his hands, at the way they hovered at his midsection, fingers twisting. He looked nice in a day suit.

It was too dark, really, to draw any more conclusions than that, but he did.

But he was not spending as much money as he was to come to any conclusions of that sort at all, so he shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall and waited for Ellis to leave him alone.

Just his luck—that had never been one of his strong suits.

"Forgive my saying so, but you don't seem well enough to be out and about."

"Did I ask you?"

But when Thomas drew up his head and opened his eyes and stepped away from the wall he proved his point by swaying.

Ellis caught him again.

"Right," he said, all hints of a smile gone, very no-nonsense. Probably the way he acted with his underlings at work. "Where are you staying?"

"None of your business."

Ellis sighed. "Jesus fucking Christ, Thomas," and then before he knew it he was saying "let's get you out of here" and "I'll settle things inside" and "stay put, love," which was ridiculous even for him and Thomas couldn't decide how much he hated it, exactly, or if he hated it at all.

He did, however, have half the mind to make a run for it, but before he'd even worked out how he'd do that Ellis was back.

"I've telephoned for a cab," he said firmly, "a few blocks over."

"They have a telephone?"

"They're useful, in a pinch."

Instead of grabbing him by the wrist and pulling, instead of dragging him by his hair or any of the other number of things he had momentarily imagined resisting, Ellis set his hand lightly on the small of his back, and Thomas went willingly.

*

"I don't know why you're bothering," Thomas mumbled.

"You saved my life," Ellis said gently.

"You ruined mine," Thomas returned, but there was no bite in it.

He didn't even know if he meant it anymore.

There was a time he would have done, but it had been years. He'd ruined his own life, since. 

And now he was going to fix it.

"I'm sorry."

"So you've said."

They didn't speak again until they reached his building, where he was reminded that Ellis was so bad at taking no for an answer he usually didn't even bother to hear somebody say it.

Which was why they ended up at his flat (he was a _property owner_ on top of everything else) shortly after.

*

"I've fucked up your evening," Thomas said weakly, and then he hiccoughed, because crying in another man's lap when he'd just promised a bunch of doctors he'd be staying far away from men and their laps for the foreseeable future wasn't bloody embarrassing enough.

"You haven't."

He did have very nice hands, though. Just... objectively. Thomas had made no affirmation that he would refrain from having his hair stroked and besides that there was to be no more of this once he was back at Downton and keeping up with his treatment, so what was the harm, really?

(He ignored the voice in the back of his mind, the one that sounded suspiciously like Dr Wilcox, Dr Clarkson, Carson and his father combined, that told him in no uncertain terms that yes there was harm, and just how bad it would be.)

"How much time d'you get off anyway?"

"I get a half-day every six weeks or so," Ellis said, soft more than anything else. "But I don't mind spending it looking after a friend, I can assure you."

"Is that what we are? Friends?"

It took him so long to reply that Thomas almost began to wonder if he'd fallen asleep and missed it, but it came, if quietly, if strained: "acquaintances, if you prefer."

They'd never been _friends_ and they were probably never going to be, now. 

Funny how he'd wanted one for so long and the only offer came from somebody who only kept him around because of a fucking life debt, all else be damned.

Thomas knew enough about life by now to know that if they ever got any closer than they were, even that wouldn't be enough to keep him around forever.

"I get out on errands, besides," Ellis added, amiable again. And he didn't stop with the hair petting, which was nice of him.

"Yes, well, if that's meant to make me feel better for ruining things for you then it isn't working–"

"I choose how to spend my own time, Thomas."

"Could've made a better choice is all."

"Would you rather've vomited in my toilet or the one back in that rat trap?"

And that shut him up.

"It wasn't that bad," Thomas said eventually, even though it was. 

"Surely you had a better option?"

"Not that I could afford."

"But – "

"Medical care costs money, funnily enough." The rest just slipped out: "but I suppose you wouldn't know."

Of course he took it in stride. "The Granthams ought to be paying for that sort of thing, not you."

"Well, they're not."

The mere idea of asking made his insides curdle.

He turned his nose against Ellis's knee. He'd got his trousers wet with tears. Embarrassing.

"I'm sorry," Elllis murmured. "I don't mean to pry."

"What _do_ you mean?"

*

As soon as he was lying in bed—Ellis's bed, and Ellis was beside him, if curled up on the other edge, nowhere near touching, a perfect gentleman—he realised his whole body hurt more than it ever had before in his life.

Far as he could remember, at least. But that had been fading, and as things stood now he could hardly remember yesterday, so maybe it had been worse at one point and he'd lived through it and been just fine.

He'd live through it now, and come out better on the other end, surely. 

If he didn't live through it it'd be his own fault, and in his own hands. That he was sure of.

But he still had a chance. Just one more.

*

He woke up shortly before six, still in pain, still nauseous, his eyes swimming and his throat raw and all of him tired like he hadn't actually slept a wink. Exhausted, even.

"Good morning," Ellis said, looking up from tying his shoes. He was fully dressed save for a waistcoat and jacket, which would have probably been pleasing if it weren't for… well, for everything else.

"Morning."

"You're headed back this morning, yeah? Can you make it to the station on your own, or would you like company?"

"Don't miss work on my account."

His own head seemed to be weighing him down.

"I'll say I was on errands."

Ellis was almost too eager.

"I can manage."

"If you're sure," he said, smile unbroken, though something had changed in his eyes.

And he was sure, and he did manage.

Everything was going to turn out, in the end. He just had to keep believing in that.


	5. 1912

Mr Carson seemed almost offended by the age of the valet… Thomas would have found it encouraging, if not for one glaring problem.

But at least it put somebody further up at the table than _Bates._

"How long've you been in service to His Lordship, then?" asked William.

Which made Mr Carson look as if he were about to have aneurysm… what an idiot. Thomas opened his mouth but was beat to it.

"There's a tricky question," said Mr Crowborough, polite, kind-eyed and smiling—he was a good actor, Thomas would give him that. "I'm not, really—I work in the Royal Household, less of a valet and more of a footman… I only come when His Grace calls." His eyes went to Thomas as he said it, and he nearly choked on his bread. The glances were getting to be too much; what he'd just _said_ tipped it over the edge. "His regular man was ill, as it happens, poor chap… the Season takes it out of people."

He kept pausing, waiting to see if anybody would speak up, but nobody did. The housemaids—Gwen and Lily at least—seemed to find him about as attractive as Thomas did.

Physically speaking.

His personality was leaving something to be desired. You couldn't trust people who were perfect; Thomas knew that better than anybody.

"But this time of year things are settling down… I suppose the Granthams didn't head up to London?"

"That we did not," said Mr Carson, as though he were a fool for asking. He was, of course, but young though he may have been, if you looked at it a certain way Mr Crowborough may as well have outranked him—valet to a Duke, member of the _Royal Household,_ up against the butler of a boring old country house… it was interesting that he was showing how much he minded it. "The late Mssrs Crawley were very dear to the family."

"Must've been a terrible loss," Mr Crowborough said mildly, "two heirs in one night… have they found another?"

Carson harrumphed. But the way Thomas saw it, you couldn't get away with not-discussing-the-business-of-the-house when it was a proper guest at the table. Of course, Mr Crowborough shouldn't have _asked,_ but now he had there was no point in pretending he hadn't.

Anna seemed to agree with him. She wasn't quite as doe-eyed as the other maids but she was interested enough that Bates was grumbling about it. 

"We're hoping they won't have to," she said, almost conspiratorial, as though it was a secret he was now in on instead of the whole bloody reason for him being at Downton in the first place. "But yes, I suppose his Lordship must be looking for him, whomever he may be."

"I should say so," Thomas contributed. "I can't think he's very pleased now Lady Mary's back on the market."

" _Thomas,_ " said Mrs Hughes sharply, and just like that he shrivelled up inside.

But Mr Crowborough caught his eye and smirked.

*

"When I was a lad my mum taught me, " Mr Crowborough was saying, "I'm good on the theory of it, but my fingers are rusty… they brook no merriment in the Royal Household."

William, looking up at him from his seat at the piano, was star-struck—because some other Yorkshire mummy's boy making it to Buckingham Palace (and surely he'd had a hand up or three to get there) was a font of inspiration. 

It was a bit too close for comfort; Thomas could admit. So far as he could tell the only advantages he really _had_ over William were being unbearably handsome and having a much better position than anybody at Downton could ever hope to aspire to. And a better personality, if an insufferable one. (It helped if Thomas ignored all the things he said that sent him feeling torn between punching him in the face—not that he was ever very good at that—and sinking into the floor, never to be seen again. He _knew,_ that much was certain. Just how much remained to be seen.)

Then again, he was also a fucking liar, because he played very well, for somebody who supposedly never got any practice. Daisy lingered over the dining table looking at Thomas with doe eyes (that he wasn't inclined to discourage) until Mrs Patmore raised up hell in the kitchens over her absence, when she darted off, squeaking.

Mrs Hughes wasn't inclined to break it up, but Mr Carson was—or at least, where William and Thomas were concerned. He blustered on about luncheon and the standard of service and how though they must always strive to do their best for the Crawleys it was all the more important now there was a Duke under the roof of the Abbey, and so on and so on. If he wanted them to get a move on he was the one preventing it more than the book of music.

"You wouldn't happen to need a third footman at hand, would you?"

Mr Carson looked flummoxed. "For a luncheon?" he asked. He'd held a grudge since the one for the servants; that was plain to see. But anybody with ears knew he'd been itching to have an extra hand around at mealtimes for months now.

"Well, it's standard, surely," Mr Crowborough went on.

"If His Grace can spare you," said Mrs Hughes swiftly, "then I don't see why not."

Mr Carson glowered at her. It was rare that him and Carson ever saw eye to eye on things, though Thomas suspected they did so now for entirely different reasons.

*

It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Having somebody else round the table at luncheon with such an important guest (and every so often they caught one another's eye, and the anticipation got closer and closer to boiling over) in attendance seemed to put the nail in the coffin where getting rid of Bates was concerned, and Thomas took over dressing Lord Grantham just after it was finished, because some people apparently weren't polite enough to finish out the day after being dismissed—not that he cared a whit about that. It suited him quite well, in fact. 

Mr Crowborough had taken to calling him Mr Grantham by afternoon tea.

*

He was going to pretend like he hadn't heard Mrs Hughes tell Lily _no, NOT in Thomas's room, we'll clear out the one across the way…_

Pretend all he liked, though, that wouldn't stop them from running into each other on the stairs over and over. 

Eventually he made the mistake of making eye contact.

"So you're _T. Barrow_ , I gather," Mr Crowborough said, with a broad and unsullied smile. 

Thomas stiffened. 

He'd known it was coming.

He didn't have to like it now it was here.

*

He spent the rest of the evening trying to put the conversation out of his mind. _He's just jealous, that's all,_ he told himself. Did he really think Thomas was so daft as to truly believe he'd have his best interests at heart? After not even a whole day? Well, he wasn't, and as soon as him and Philip had some time alone together he'd show him up; he was sure of it. _I thought you could do with a warning._ Thomas thought he could do without the stick up his arse, but he'd refrained from saying so thus far.

No chance Philip was really so close with his _temporary_ valet as to confide in him things such as that…

Mr Crowborough hadn't come out and said it, but he hadn't had to…

_It's easy to get swept off your feet by men like that_ , he'd said. _Doesn't matter how much experience you've got, if it's your first season or your hundredth…_

Thomas didn't dare tell him he'd only ever had two.

He liked word games, this one. That was even more proof it was all made up, wasn't it? He couldn't keep his story straight, so he talked around it.

But some of the things he _did_ know…

Thomas knew what they shared and he had the letters to prove it, though he hoped very much he'd never have to. Nothing _Mr Crowborough_ said cast a doubt because none of it was true and that was that. What was the point in questioning things when he knew he had all the answers already? There wasn't one. It'd be a waste of his time. He knew the truth and he knew the cards were stacked in his favour, and he knew _Philip_ , too. He knew what he liked, what spoke to him, what pleased him… he knew he was best for him, and that the same was true the other way round. From the way he wrote, and from how it had been last summer, Philip knew it, too. He felt it as much as he did. All Thomas needed to do was to remind him of it, if things went sour. 

But they wouldn't.

Because it was all made up.

*

"I noticed you seemed to take your time in the gardens today," said Lady Edith. 

"Is that where you went off to?" Lord Grantham said brightly, ill-will ignored. "And how did you find them?"

"Very pleasant," Philip answered smoothly, but Lady Edith ploughed on, because God forbid she behave herself in front of a fucking duke.

"I don't see what could take so much time," she continued, "with only yourselves for company—Sybil wondered if you'd disappeared into the hedges."

Lady Mary was glaring daggers. "Sybil would do well to hold her tongue in future."

"I didn't mean it like _that_ ," said Lady Sybil, indignant. "They were outside; I don't see how anything could be improper about it–"

"Why should she, if she sees things worth mentioning?"

"I wasn't _spying_ or anything, I was _reading,_ and I only said so because I thought it was romantic–" 

You'd think they were raised by wolves.

Lucky the meal was almost over… they didn't go at it for very long before Lady Grantham found her spine.

_The gardens?_ Thomas mouthed as they went through. Philip tilted his head toward the door, face apologetic, but he was smiling, and it was more real and true than he'd seen on him all day.

_See,_ he thought to himself, _it's nothing._

*

Quick, heavy rapping at the door startled him.

"Thomas!"

In jumping out of bed he flung his book to the floor and nearly tripped over his slippers.

"Yes, Mr Carson," he called, begging his voice not to reflect how frantic he felt.

"I don't suppose you intended to retire _before_ attending to his Lordship?"

What was there bloody left to _do_?

"No, Mr Carson–"

Somehow he got the slippers on his feet, then scrambled for his dressing gown, then skid his way across the room to get the door open, and—

"Looks like I've got the hang of him after all," Mr Crowborough said brightly. 

There was nobody else in the corridor.

His pulse was still racing; he was still out of breath.

"What the _bloody hell,_ " Thomas said.

"Might I come in?"

"That– what?"

"I'm very good at impressions," he said, as though nothing about this needed further explanation. Thomas felt as if he ought to be looking round, as if Carson was hiding just round the corner in the flesh. And he kept talking without bothering to give him any time to catch up: "Listen, I think we got off on the wrong foot, earlier… my own fault, I shouldn't have cornered you. But I wondered if…?"

He gestured toward Thomas's door.

Thomas _did_ look, then, checking for anybody else lurking in the shadows…

There wasn't anybody. 

"May I?"

"You're _mad_ ," Thomas said, bewildered.

"Didn't know if you'd open the door elsewise."

Thomas didn't, either—but he supposed he had to now.

*

"If he's such a rake why're you still hanging about, then?" Thomas asked. Something fell out of place as he said it, though—his voice was too soft, not nearly so cold as he'd have liked.

_I still don't believe you,_ he wanted to say with his eyes. _Not a word of it._

He'd humour him.

Find the holes in his story and poke out some more.

It was just going to be tougher to do than he'd thought.

It would have helped if he weren't so bloody handsome.

Mr Crowborough blinked, leaning back in his chair. He lifted his chin—and then looked Thomas up and down, which did not serve to make him feel at all comfortable with the situation. "Well," he said at last. _Don't patronise me,_ Thomas thought. "He pays me, doesn't he?"

He spoke as though Thomas were a naive child in need of instruction.

"...you've got to take your chances when they come, this line of work… surely you know all about that." 

"What does he pay you with, exactly?"

The snipe didn't do much. Mr Crowborough just laughed. "Currency, naturally."

" _Naturally._ "

"Your doubt's telling me something, though I don't know that you'd care for just what."

Funny how words that were spoken in such polite, easygoing tones could be such a slap in the fucking face.

Thomas opened his mouth, but no words came out.

"You wantto be his valet, yourself, don't you?" Mr Crowborough pressed. "What are you expecting, in terms of compensation?"

"You don't know a thing about what I want," Thomas retorted.

But he was beginning to doubt that with every passing minute.

*

"Men like you and I don't get to burn bridges."

"Don't we?"

Thomas could think of a few ways.

Hypothetically speaking, at least. Everybody knew the cards they had up their sleeves, getting involved with people so high above their station...

Everybody with brains, at least.

"Not without standing on them," Mr Crowborough countered.

Thomas scowled.

"Look here," Mr Crowborough went on, "I might be the only man for whom this holds true, but in terms of sticking round any _much_ longer… for work, that is… the Duke of Crowborough would be a step down, the direction I'm headed." _A step down_. Who did he think he was, exactly? "You've got nothing to worry about, Mr Grantham, I have no designs on him, I can assure you," he added, hushed, his eyes bright, a smug smile at his lips. "But, I may have them on you."

Oh.

Well.

That changed things, didn't it.

*

"I shouldn't," Thomas breathed.

"But you want to, don't you?"

_Would I have let you take all my clothes off if I didn't?_

Thomas wet his lips but kept silent, and when Mr Crowborough kissed him again he kissed back, made it rougher, more insistent. Yes, he kissed back, but he also had the sense to break it off. "Doesn't change that I'm _spoken for,_ Mr Crowborough."

But he knew once he'd said it that it was the wrong tack.

"Not very loudly," he replied. 

Thomas didn't know why he had the need to convince him, but he did, and it was so deep he couldn't just dig it up and get rid of it some other way.

He knew he was right, so it shouldn't have mattered.

"You said yourself you knew about the blokes on the side," Mr Crowborough added.

"They're not the ones he writes to."

The smile this prompted was not very friendly. "Hm." He wasn't coming off as very thoughtful (not _sincerely_ thoughtful _,_ at least) but was probably aiming to be. He'd not been around very long—but even so, it had been enough time for Thomas to figure that out about him. That he was pretending. "And about how long do you have to wait for him to get back round to that, generally?"

He kept asking questions like that, prodding at the places he was already sore as if they were written on his forehead and not shoved down to the bottom of his heart.

"He's busy," Thomas managed, but it was a weak answer and he knew it. Probably exactly what he wanted to hear, was excuses… because that said it all, really. Giving a justification instead of a proper answer.

Thomas knew how that one worked because he did it to other people.

"You're a servant," he whispered. "You're busier, I can assure you."

"I don't have to _defend myself_ –"

"Then why are you trying?" Mr Crowborough stepped back, looking at him with intention—though to do just _what_ was unclear. "Why are you trying," he repeated, more softly this time, gentle, entwining their fingers together.

"You've got it wrong," Thomas said at full volume, something smouldering in him, the words spiralling out of his mouth, "I wasn't born yesterday, I know the sort you're talking about and I'm sorry you've," been stupid enough to fall for it, "had _problems_ , before, but he's different."

_We're different._

"You realise how you sound, surely?" 

Thomas swallowed.

He did.

"I saw you earlier," he pressed on. "Both of you."

He didn't need to specify when. Thomas felt his limbs tense and couldn't relax them, no matter how he tried.

They'd been alone, he'd thought.

The rejection stung worse now that he knew they hadn't been. 

*

Nobody would ever have brought him up as a paragon of good decision making and that wasn't about to change now.

The only problem was the guilt set in as soon as he dropped to his knees.

*

"Well, I– I figured we'd be together," Thomas was saying. "Cause of the season."

"Must've been tough," replied Mr Crowborough, hand warm upon his hip. The bed was not big enough for both of them but they were managing even so. "Knowing he was in London when you couldn't be."

Did he have to rub it in, though?

"Sorry," he added hastily, as though he could read his mind. "I know I keep saying it… I don't mean to be crass, just it gets to me, seeing people like him carrying on year after year, leaving people like us lonely in their wake…"

"Why should I believe you, again?"

At this point he was only arguing for the sake of arguing, really… his heart wasn't in it anymore, not after what they'd shared.

That was the real problem. He could never go back after going to bed with somebody and he knew it.

The best policy was to _not go to bed with people,_ especially when you were counting on being with somebody else for as long as possible, but it was true, after all, that he'd agreed to it, when they'd first parted.

It just had never crossed his mind to take advantage of it before.

Even though he'd known that part wasn't mutual.

"Because I can't lie to save my life," Mr Crowborough said softly, a smile at his lips. Candlelight flattered him. "I can pretend, actually, but I can't lie."

Thomas felt like he had things the other way round, himself.

_A few hours ago you didn't believe a word coming out of this man's mouth,_ part of him said. _What's changed?_

Nothing, really, and he knew that, but at the same time… he'd been up against this before. He wasn't exactly unpopular in London. Summer before last he'd had a constant stream of blokes from other houses telling him in no uncertain terms that he was about to get his heart broken but they could fix it up again, if he'd listen to them.

They'd all turned out to be right (about getting his heart broken, not about fixing it), but still, he knew what the real goal was. 

And if they'd been right _then…_

_Don't be bloody daft,_ he thought to himself, _think with your fucking brain, not your prick._

"And 'cause I've been in your shoes," he continued, "and I've never found them to be a good fit."

"Who with?" Thomas asked.

Mr Crowborough blinked.

"Do you really care to know?" 

"Maybe it'll help me believe you."

That made him laugh, and Thomas felt an undue sense of accomplishment for it.

"I reckon I'd better tell some stories, then," Mr Crowborough said, still smiling. "Given it's in your best interests."

And he _did_ have stories… It made sense he was seeing such awful things everywhere, if he'd been through all that. Didn't make him right, but it explained some things.

When it came to be his turn Thomas gave in with embarrassingly little prompting, spilling everything about the Earl and all that had happened in his first season… and giving away when his first season _was._

"I wouldn't've expected that," Mr Crowborough replied. "Would've thought you'd been working for years."

"Well, I have been."

"Just not in service."

"No, not in service."

"You're better at it than I am," he went on, and Thomas scoffed. "Couldn't keep a straight face through dinner, myself… whereas you're a natural."

"Yes, well, I've lots of practie."

He spent his years growing up putting on a blank face; he was only keeping it up.

"And when did you say you started valeting?"

"Properly you mean?"

"Yeah," said Mr Crowborough. "For Lord Grantham."

"Last year, I guess… then the old one left for good this winter and that was what, er… that's why they put me in the job."

A job he was good at, and one that was leaps and bounds better than being a footman.

"That's longer than I've been, actually."

_That_ Thomas hadn't expected. He raised his eyebrows.

It put him on the defensive, maybe for the first time in the whole day. "Didn't start til April," he went on, "wasn't allowed, before then… did a bit of secondary stuff, but that's nothing when it's just for guests and the like."

"I have no idea what that means," Thomas said truthfully.

"Which part?" But he didn't have to explain, because it only took him a second longer to realise: "secondary duties?"

"Yes, that."

"It's unique to the Royal Household," Mr Crowborough said, a quirk in his lips again. "We've got more than one sort of valet." He didn't explain further. "But yeah, I didn't get to be a principal til this summer, and when His Grace took a liking to me…"

This, too, resulted in no elaboration.

Probably he ought to have been thankful.

He was done hearing about how foolish he was—even if he hadn't yet said it outright to his face.

"It's getting late," said Mr Crowborough, just as Thomas jerked midway through falling asleep. "This isn't my bed."

"It can be," Thomas said, coy as he knew how to be, and it worked.

No wonder he got reeled in by so many unsavoury types.

_What do you call_ _your own_ _behaviour this evening?_ he asked himself, but he shoved it out of his mind before he could come up with an answer.

"Shall I stay, then?"

Thomas nodded.

"Thanks," Mr Crowborough murmured, smiling again. He fluttered his fingers upon his skin, and Thomas shivered. "Wondered if you'd throw me out."

"I don't do that," Thomas said, offended.

"And so a lucky man am I." He paused. Thomas rolled over halfway to blow out the last burning candle, and when he rolled back he found himself caught up in an embrace that he could not, in the interest of honesty, call unwelcome. "Goodnight, Thomas," he said, speaking against his forehead, sending a shiver down his spine.

"Wait," Thomas said. His voice felt too unlike him, coming out of his mouth… much too shy. Much too hesitant. "Don't I get to know your name? If you know mine."

Mr Crowborough pulled away just enough so Thomas could see his whole face. He had an answer for that one same as for everything else: "I like to keep things professional," he answered, in a low, conspiratorial voice, his eyes sparkling in a way that had Thomas fluttery in the chest in a way he _really_ shouldn't have been. "...Mr Grantham."

*

"It's near six," murmured Mr Crowborough, lips to his shoulder. "We ought to get ready."

Waking up in the morning was easier than it had been for a long while.

That felt wrong; it _ought_ to have been the opposite, after the night he'd had, but maybe he slept better after sex or something. Who knew.

"Have to get out of bed for that," Thomas said.

The way they were tangled up that was going to be a monumental task.

"If I don't start now I won't at all," Mr Crowborough told him with a laugh, and he got started on it anyway, slipping his leg out from between his own, pulling his hand from its resting place at his thigh… losing touch was not at all the same as having it. "I'm not very punctual."

"So I've got that on you as well."

"You've got plenty of things on me," he said, still cheerful. Too cheerful for the morning, in fact, but it was beginning to rub off on him. Would it stick, no, but it was hard to be grumpy while looking at that face. Thomas leaned over to kiss him, too sentimental for his own good—and he didn't remember the other person in the equation until after it had finished, at which point guilt began to settle in his gut again. 

"You're getting dressed here, then?"

He was careful not to make it sound like it was unwelcome, because it wasn't.

"Yeah," he said, "yeah, I can dress you, actually," and then before Thomas knew it he was out of bed—his dressing gown from the night before still draped on the chair—and at his dresser, already opening drawers. 

Something he should have been mad about, but the view was _preoccupying._ To say the least. "What?" he said, in a daze.

Mr Crowborough seemed undeterred: though he stood up straight, he left the drawers open, one hand on the top edge, fingers fluttering just like they had at the piano the night before… but when Thomas said, "I can dress myself, thank you," he was back in bed and seated beside him almost before he could blink.

Thomas looked up at him, letting his eyes go slow, taking his time. His body had been nice before but it was even nicer now, in the morning sunshine.

He sort of wondered if he was still dreaming.

"Well, it's worth practising, isn't it," Mr Crowborough said, leaning over him again. "I'm not a proper valet, besides—haven't been doing it as long as you have." As he spoke he drew loops upon Thomas's arm with his fingers, from his shoulder all the way down to his hand… He shivered. "Maybe you can teach me a thing or two."

A valet in shining armour.

_He's buttering you up,_ Thomas told himself, humming at the kiss to his neck, in just the right place… _He's only talking like that so he can get himself back into your trousers._

But he hadn't exactly minded having him in them the _first_ time, had he?

*

Much to Lady Mary's delight, Philip stayed for three days and four nights.

By the time they finally got to be alone together Thomas had got it about halfway through his skull what to expect, and that was better than nothing. Even so, everything he'd prepared to say left his head in the moment; it had taken all he had in him not to burst into tears. Bloody pathetic. Even the threats he'd concocted over the past few days went unsaid—he wasn't about to cut off his nose to spite his face, and his name was all over the proof.

_You can't burn a bridge you're standing on._

What did he have, now? Nothing—no lover, no job (because already Carson couldn't stand it), no prospects or anything to speak of. No _lover._ _A few weeks of madness._ It had been a fucking _year._ He wasn't a toy; he couldn't be thrown aside and replaced once he got boring—and he hadn't got boring, he knew he hadn't, no matter what Mr Crowborough had said… implied, really, and then he'd acted like it was all Thomas's idea in the first place… but the more he thought about it the more he wondered if maybe it _was._

Being unfaithful hadn't helped.

But none of that mattered, it didn't, because _before_ all this, before the rubbish with heiresses and obligations and all that… it had been different, then. Mr Crowborough said himself he wasn't around very much before the summer so what would he know. And hadn't Philip always said he'd shared more of himself with Thomas than with anybody?

He didn't know what was true and what wasn't, anymore.

_I hate you,_ he thought, at every moment he crossed his mind, in the bath in the hall in the men's corridor in his first thing after he woke up in the morning, _I hate you I hate you how could you you fucking bastard._

But not even spite kept him from reading and rereading the letter he kept tucked under his mattress every night— _my sweet Thomas_ ,Philip had always written, and in the rest of it there were even more, things like _my dearest_ and _my lover_ and _my darling._ Always _my._ Words that made his heart beat fast and his palms go clammy the first time he read them interspersed with ones that made him blush, that even now left him warm inside and wanting.

Weeks passed before he noticed the rest were gone.


	6. 1920

He'd sent the letter out of desperation—they hadn't spoken for ages, not since the war ended and everything went back to usual.

Well, not back to. Some of it was different, very different. But they hadn't needed to write, since, because Thomas wanted nothing more to do with the war if he could help it and Ellis wasn't back at the front with healed up wounds clinging to every word he had from somebody on English soil, and everything that had happened before that… probably it was better for both of them if they pretended they'd never met til the Somme.

And if they'd never met til the Somme, they had nothing in common save the war.

And now the war was over.

But he figured if anyone would know anything that could help him after what had happened, it would probably be him.

What he hadn't expected was for him to show up in person.

"Right, what happened, exactly?" Ellis asked, pint in hand—he took small sips and kept his focus on Thomas the whole time.

"A lot, I suppose," Thomas mumbled.

"Start with the bird's eye view, then."

*

Ellis sat back in his seat. He was, Thomas thought, enjoying feeling superior… he tapped his fingers on the table and looked at Thomas with exasperated eyes. "I'm afraid in that case I don't know what you need me for," he said.

"I wasn't expecting you to just show up."

"I was visiting my parents," he said. "It seemed appropriate."

"People around here won't think so."

"You're allowed to have friends," Ellis said, gentle.

"Am I?" 

_Don't push it,_ Thomas warned himself, _he wants to help…_

Wisely, Ellis ignored him. "Well, it sounds as if you'll have a character, and that's something."

About that...

"I don't think that's guaranteed anymore," he mumbled.

 _That_ made Ellis pay more attention… he cast a few glances around the pub, then sat up straight again, leaned forward, eyes intense at Thomas's own. 

But he didn't say anything.

"I may've softened things a bit in my letter," Thomas added lamely.

He didn't even miss a beat: "Right," Ellis said. "What've we got to work with, here?"

"How do you mean?"

"I want the full story, for one," he said pointedly. Thomas nodded, though he felt a flush rise to his cheeks, leftovers of mortification twisting in his stomach. "And then… anything else, I suppose. Anything you've got we can put a spin on, should we have to."

"What are you proposing?"

"Well," Ellis said, something new in his eyes, "I know you, Thomas, and I think you might be overstating the case a bit… I'd bet it'll all turn out, in the end."

Thomas scoffed.

"It has before, hasn't it?"

"Well –"

"But, if the worst comes to the worst," he went on, "people are willing to overlook quite a bit when it comes written on Royal Household letterhead."

*

"You're a capable bloke… just have to take a leap of faith."

Because even if they had a back up plan that he insisted was foolproof, though Thomas did have his doubts, it was best for both of them if they didn't have to use it.

The only problem was…

"It won't just _work out_ ," retorted Thomas. "I've got a feeling."

"Say you _do_ find a place all on your own," Ellis went on, "what's stopping you from leaving?" 

As if he could find one in the first place, the way things were going… word travelled fast, in their industry, besides. Who could say O'Brien wouldn't be sending along a letter to the lady of whatever house he ended up at, if he managed to end up at one at all?

" _Something_ is," he said. It wasn't exactly fun having to defend himself when he knew he was right… not anymore. "Something will."

"Well, certainly, if that's how you're intending to look at it…"

"Mr Ellis, I have been trying to leave this place for the last eight years," he said bitterly. "Funnily enough things just seem to get in the way."

Ellis stopped with his glass halfway to his lips, face suddenly impassive. He set it back down. 

"Things," he said.

"People."

_Me._

_You._

He didn't have to say it because they were both thinking it already.

Still, he felt bad for bringing it up. Just because he had a card up his sleeve didn't mean he always had to play it. That's what had gotten him into this mess… thinking he knew what the next move was going to be. From him and from other people.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," Thomas mumbled.

"That reminds me," Ellis said, with utmost ease, as though the prior moment hadn't happened at all… that was a way of his Thomas appreciated. "I'd like your advice."

" _You_ want _my_ advice?"

"You'll understand why in a moment…"

*

"Haven't you got other people to ask about this stuff?"

Ellis shrugged. "None who'd understand like you would."

Thomas didn't believe that for a moment—but if Ellis was going to continue to try so hard to make him feel _included_ there was no point in looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Still, though… it had been six years since he'd dipped his toes into this rubbish, and given the state of things at Downton his chances for that were long gone, unless he decided he quite liked the idea of shagging building planners or something.

But he'd changed his view on things in prior years. Saw it differently. 

It wasn't worth it anymore, jumping so many rungs up the ladder at once. It never worked out. And he'd thought that with Jimmy...

"So what do you think?" Ellis asked, not so confident as he usually was, shy almost.

Maybe he _did_ need advice. And maybe Thomas just happened to be around, that was probably it. He had to know dozens of servants who'd been in their shoes; what did Thomas have on any of them?

He raised his eyebrows. " _I_ think you're bloody daft, Dick."

"Yeah," Ellis said. He was smiling, though—probably both because of the man and because Thomas had called him by his nickname. "Yeah, I figured you'd say that, and I reckon I am, but…"

"But?" Thomas pressed.

It made Ellis smile, though sheepishly. He looked up, met his gaze—that was something he'd always admired about him. His pride. How much it took to embarrass him. He had just enough of it not to put up with bullshit but not so much he was intolerable.

Well, that wasn't entirely true.

He'd gotten even more smarmy since the new job fell into his lap, but Thomas could admit he'd be even worse, if it were him.

He was owed a bit of smugness, besides. You didn't get so far as to be the king's valet by chance.

"—slow down, Mr Ellis, no need for a speech…"

He laughed. "Well," he said at last. "Peter's different."

"Don't we say that about everyone?" Thomas asked, but only to be contrarian. He might have agreed, in fact—but his impression was based on a few weeks in the summer of 1914, and the whole world had changed since then, no matter how much the people they served wanted to pretend it hadn't.

"No, I reckon he actually is." Ellis peered into his glass, pensive, nearly unmoving. Thomas took the opportunity to look at him more closely. "I've never worked for him, as a matter of fact."

"Does that change much?"

"It does," Ellis said. "It does, yeah."

"You've already made your mind up, haven't you."

"I may have done."

Thomas could have laughed, himself, if not kindly. "How're you gonna keep an eye on him, if he's in Tangiers all the time?"

"Well, we have an agreement on that score."

Thomas rolled his eyes.

Ellis laughed again—at precisely what was unclear. He downed the rest of his beer. "And there's plenty you can put in a letter," he said, too shrewd for Thomas's liking.

"Yes," Thomas replied, a sudden tightness in his chest, in all directions, as though he were being pulled apart. "Yes, there is, isn't there."


	7. 1923

"Well, then you've been promoted, haven't you been?"

"Doesn't feel like it."

Thomas pulled his shoes and stockings off of his feet and dug into the sand up to his ankles, spreading his toes. Odd that the sand could be so warm when it was so mild outside—but then the sun was shining, if through clouds, and he was sweating. Too much punting a ball around with people who couldn't kick the damn thing if it were held right in front of their feet.

But then, Ellis looked warm, too, and he'd only watched… lying on his back with his sleeves rolled up and his tie loose. His jacket and waistcoat were folded up beside him; he'd rolled up his stockings in his garters and put them in his shoes… Thomas didn't know how he did everything so carefully every single time, but it could be very nice to watch.

Nice to watch while pretending you weren't.

In retrospect he was very glad he'd been stupid enough to ask him to come along. Everybody from Downton was on the other side of the beach, busy being happy and normal and all that… it was good for him, to take his mind off all the house business, off all the things he _knew_ were being kept from him… if Baxter had any sense at all she'd spit it out soon.

But then, if the woman had _sense_ , she wouldn't have ended up in prison just to please a man.

_And what's your own record on that score?_

"What went on in New York, then?"

"Plenty of things went on in New York," Thomas said frankly. 

"But do you know why?" Ellis pressed. He really liked to push back, didn't he. "Can't imagine he was suddenly dissatisfied with your quality of work, after three, four years –"

"Six."

If you counted _before…_ but those two probably weren't worth counting, because _technically_ he'd still been a first footman.

A first footman taking over for months on end while His Lordship tried and failed to ever find some other man to do the job and stay in it, but a first footman all the same, and paid to show for it.

"Well, yeah," Ellis said. "And that's in your favour, surely… far as I'm aware you're a fine valet — "

"I _do_ know why," Thomas snapped. "And it doesn't matter what it was, cause the point's the same and he's not gonna take me on again if he can help it."

It had been long enough by now he knew that for sure.

"Do you really mind so much?" asked Ellis, and he could have been asking about anything else, for all the air in his tone… "There's nothing wrong with being an under-butler."

"Yes, well, there is if you wouldn't _like_ to be one."

He was good at it, and maybe he _would_ have liked it, if it had happened some other way… if the circumstances were different.

"I won't argue… but surely you considered other options?"

"Well, his Lordship said he could hand me off to bloody _Branson_ , if I didn't fancy it–"

"The problem with that being?" Ellis interrupted. He opened his eyes and gazed up at him, keenly, and Thomas quickly turned his head toward the sea and pretended that's where he'd been looking all along. "Aside from the demotion, obviously."

"With Branson?"

He nodded. "A job's a job, isn't it," _that is absolutely ridiculous coming from you and you have_ got _to know it, nobody is that obtuse,_ "so why not put up with it for a bit and send your name out in the meantime?"

"Because I let him bugger me all last winter is why."

Ellis made a noise that was as satisfying as it was undignified.

" —winter before last, now, I guess. And he was the _chauffeur_ , before. He doesn't even _want_ a valet."

Cruel punishment, for both of them. What Lord Grantham had been thinking even suggesting it was beyond him.

"Well, I wouldn't've put up with it, myself, to be fair to you."

" _You_ would have gotten a job at some other house with a snap of your fingers."

"You know," Ellis said abruptly, propping himself up on his elbow, shielding the sun from his brow with his hand— _he's gorgeous,_ Thomas realised, as he so often did, every time like the first—and giving him a _look._ "I don't understand you."

"What's not to understand?"

"Thomas, when was the last time you answered a job advertisement?"

He sat up all the way, then, staring at him expectantly.

"You haven't since 1907," Thomas said, after a moment of floundering.

"We're not talking about me," countered Ellis. "Besides, I haven't had to."

"...well, I keep... also not having to."

Of course, the more he was going to defend himself the more persistent Ellis would get, and he already _knew_ where he was going with this... 

"And it's just happened again," he said. "But I don't see how you can act as if you haven't got a chance in hell to leave when you've never tried."

Well.

"You talk as if you hate Downton, but whenever I suggest you go some place else I feel as if I've spooked a damn horse." Thomas looked at his bare toes, watching the sand stream off as he flexed them. Ellis laid himself down again beside him with a huff, but he'd adjusted, and now the backs of his fingers were at his thigh, moving just slightly back and forth… "What's stopping you?"

 _He's an inveterate fidgeter,_ Thomas told himself, _he probably doesn't even know he's doing it._

But it was hard to think logical, when he hadn't been touched in a year and a half.

Not how he wanted to be.

"I don't want to go unless I have to," he said quietly.

"You don't have to keep that one close to your vest, with me."

He looked back toward him, but Ellis had his chin up and his elbow over his eyes again… the back of his forearm was already getting pink.

"And l don't know if I hate it or not," Thomas added.

"I'm not asking you to know," Ellis told him mildly. He drew his hand away, then, laying it over his chest flat, still… and then an instant later playing with his tie. "Just to be honest."

"Yeah, well." _Do you_ know _what you do to me?_ "Honesty's not my strong suit."

"Nor is it mine."

*

"How're things with Peter?"

Ellis beamed; Thomas found himself suddenly breathless, and looked away: first down at his feet, then out, toward the water.

It was a better view over here, really. He'd been easily convinced to walk—best to talk about these things on the move—but he hadn't expected to actually enjoy himself, necessarily. But now that they were away from the shouting children (really it wasn't them he minded so much as their _mothers_ ) and the whole beach was full of rocks and driftwood and it was just _them…_

He liked it.

He'd forgotten what it was to properly enjoy himself, lately.

"Things are excellent,'' said Ellis eventually, speaking with a smile in his voice. "It gets tough, sometimes, being so far… but yeah, we're excellent."

If Thomas had placed a bet on that relationship he'd have lost a good deal of money. "I don't know how you do it," he said, honestly.

"Well, he's here right now." A pause. Rocks crunched beneath their feet; the sound of the waves against the sand seemed louder. Thomas found he didn't dare look at him. "London, that is, not Brighton."

"What's he in London for?"

"He comes back to England every full moon."

He'd been working for those kinds of people for more than fifteen years now and yet he still had it in him to be surprised by all the eccentricities that came along with them.

"Why does he do that?"

"It's the artistic disposition," Ellis answered. He stopped walking; Thomas stopped two paces later and turned back to look at him. He had his hands in his pockets and was rocking back on his feet, still grinning. Thomas couldn't remember ever having liked somebody so much he couldn't control his own face, but then, Ellis showed more of his feelings than he did, once he was comfortable with a person. "Finds 'em more inspiring over here."

Thomas just never got comfortable with people, himself.

"What, so he just goes back and forth every— twenty-eight days, is it?"

"Twenty-eight, yeah," he said. The eye contact was too much; Thomas had to look out at the water again. "Bit less, actually, what with travel time—has to take a ferry and then it's up through France by rail and all, so it's a hike, but it makes him happy."

"That's ridiculous," Thomas said flatly. 

"Yeah, it is, quite frankly." Ellis raised his eyebrows. "Thomas, he's a Marquess; court's in session."

...Right.

"It _was_ a full moon, though," Ellis added, bright-eyed and focused. "Few days ago."

Thomas huffed, feeling heat in his cheeks. The way he was looking at him didn't help matters. _Why do you always fall for his fucking tricks..._ "How do you know these things?" he asked, and he sounded every bit as incredulous as he felt.

Ellis laughed. "I pay attention to them."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we love a beach fic


	8. 1927

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **content notes:** suicide, trauma, mature-rated sexual content

From the first instant his intention had been to make a quick getaway—could always use Albert as an excuse, he already seemed nervous—but Ellis didn't let him. After putting his shoes away (why had Thomas stayed to watch that, exactly?) he came up to him at the door and looked at him in a way that made him feel as if he'd forgotten to dress himself in the morning. 

"Thought you'd left," he said, eyebrows raised.

Thomas blinked. He did his best not to flinch away. There was something about Ellis that caught him off guard, sometimes. Not always, but _sometimes,_ and whenever it did it always took far too long for his comfort to put it back up again. "A year and a half ago, yes," he said with a huff, "but I'm back now."

"Happily?"

"I suppose."

Ellis looked at him for a long, poignant moment. "You don't seem to be."

"You've been here for thirty minutes, what do you know?"

"Been about an hour by now," he said smoothly, "I reckon, but I'm bad at that… bad at time."

"Is that why it takes you months to answer my letters?"

To his surprise he nodded. "Probably, yeah." He paused, looking around him into the corridor. "But it takes you years to answer mine."

He didn't fancy the reminder.

What shambles his life was in, before… it was easy to forget sometimes that things didn't used to be so stable.

Of course, whenever he _did_ there was always an unwelcome reminder of how things used to be just round the corner.

"Yes, well…"

"I don't begrudge you for it," he said, all soft. It made something in Thomas flutter. "But I'll let you get on…"

Thomas took that as a dismissal, but Ellis called out to him just before he made it to the stairs. He turned around, heart pounding. _What's he going to do, chuck something at you? What are you afraid of?_

"I'm pleased to see you looking so well," he said. "I am."

"I thought I was unhappy," Thomas said slowly. His sneer was half-hearted. 

He didn't know why he still bothered behaving in such a way with him, really. Why he kept pushing back. They'd had their ups and downs, yes, but they were older now, and for a time it had even been _easy,_ being around each other, writing to each other. They'd almost been friends, really. Close enough. Ellis probably thought they had been. Of course, then Thomas had lost his last ally in the house—his last ally and his only friend, though that had changed, since, thankfully—and his sanity with him, and everything had gone to shit again. 

Then, maybe he did know his reasons, deep down. Maybe he knew what he wanted.

Maybe he'd known for a while.

"We'll work on that bit before I go."

Then he shut the door to his room, and Thomas was left alone.

*

He did know, of course. He knew very well. It was almost comical—being in love with somebody when every minute you spent in his company reminded you of the first time you'd ever had your heart shattered into pieces, and having been for so long. Knowing he probably felt the same but that it wasn't ever going to work.

Not under such false pretenses.

The thing was, where they were concerned… as far as he knew Richard Ellis had done one awful thing in his life, and he himself had done hundreds. Not that he regretted most of them, because regret wasn't the same as guilt, was it? 

And that was the difference between them, was Dick seemed to regret things and Thomas didn't. The whole saving-his-life thing hadn't helped. Thomas knew what it was like to want to make up for mistakes you'd made but it had been fifteen years. Even if he still felt it, even if it still hurt, sometimes. If not always. But how could it not, when it did? He could remember every other betrayal in his life like it happened yesterday and that one was no different. 

Fifteen years.

He was old enough now, and had been for some time, to understand that it would have happened anyway, whether Philip had enlisted another lover to do the dirty work for him or not, because so far as he could tell it had never been what he'd thought it was in the first place. That had been the whole point, after all. He also understood now that he hadn't been the only one of them under a spell… knowing the whole story, Dick may have been burned even worse than he had been himself, eventually. Thomas had gotten a sick satisfaction over it when he'd first told him, but it had faded quickly. You couldn't stay resentful of somebody you dragged out of a shellhole for very long… even if you could convince yourself otherwise. 

Telling him he was one of dozens of men, maybe hundreds, he'd had to get out of the line of fire had only encouraged him to stick around. To be the only one decent enough to, Thomas supposed, but that wasn't how he saw it, himself.

On the other hand, who else could he say had been with him as long as Dick had? It had happened years ago now. As a matter of fact it had been more than a decade, and Thomas didn't know what to make of that, in the circumstances. It wasn't as if they'd been bosom friends the whole time, but sometimes—those brief hours they'd had together, in the past, the ones where things had gone _well…_

He'd never known what to make of it. 

The point was, he seemed to think Thomas was a good person, and that was a problem, because he wasn't.

*

"Your room hasn't changed," Ellis said, with a hint of surprise.

"It's got electricity now," Thomas said. "So there's that."

"Christ, yeah… it's been around so long I forget we didn't used to have it, actually."

Thomas gestured toward the chair at the bedside, and he sat—legs open, casual. It didn't help that he was half-dressed, but that had been Thomas's fault, for interrupting him in the middle of his getting ready for bed.

"Buckingham Palace has got buzzers now," he went on. "Instead of bells."

"Buckingham Palace has got a lot of things we don't."

Ellis laughed, but he didn't say anything more, just tipped back and forth in his chair. Thomas wondered if he knew he was doing it. For somebody so comfortable with himself, he fidgeted a lot.

"I'm surprised you remember," said Thomas. "What it looked like." 

The chair's front legs fell back to the floor with a soft _thud._ "Well," he said, turning his head to look out the window, then back at Thomas again. He tucked one thumb underneath a strap of his braces, drew up and down in the space of about an inch, and Thomas's eyes followed his fingers. "It's hard to forget, isn't it."

"My bedroom?"

He smiled. "You, more like."

*

They had a lot to catch up on, as it happened. 

It brought up things he hadn't thought of for a while, things he'd pushed out of his mind...

"...but you knew him too, didn't you?"

"Not like you did."

Not since before the war—Lady Sybil's season.

It had been a breath of fresh air. 

"I wonder if I knew him so well as I thought," Ellis said slowly. "I– well, I hadn't seen him since the shooting, when I heard, he'd– he'd gotten out of all to do with the season, finally, been trying for ages, but we'd written back and forth all year, same as always, and—" He stopped speaking abruptly, fixing Thomas with an intense stare. "You understand what happened, surely."

He wished he didn't. 

"I figured it wasn't _malaria_ ," said Thomas, unable to look at him back. It wasn't like him, to jump around so much; hearing it made him more nervous than he should have been. He knew what was coming, after all. "If that's what you mean."

Ellis nodded. "Ben put that one out," he said. "His valet."

Something turned in Thomas's stomach.

"Story held up, if you didn't look too close, and of course nobody did 'cause nobody cared to." He paused. "But you don't treat malaria with an entire bottle of quinine in one go, by my reckoning."

" _Fuck_ ," Thomas said.

"Yeah."

"Fuck."

"Yeah." Ellis rubbed at his chin, eyes downcast. "It's been two years and I still…"

It was so rare to see him at a loss for words.

His instinct was to reach out, but when he did Ellis only squeezed his hand once before letting go.

"I was a fucking mess, that summer," he murmured. Thomas thought, _you and me both._ "Was worried they'd sack me, for a time, things got so bad—we were up at Balmoral, I read it in the papers—he was meant to be attending the garden party come September, actually, and I had a hunch, but once I found out for sure- I couldn't - I can't help but think if…" He sighed. His eyes closed for longer than a blink, but once they were open again it was as though nothing had happened. He gave a strained smile. "Well, it was only a month out, wasn't it?"

Thomas swallowed down the lump in his throat. It turned into lead in his stomach. "He wouldn't have wanted that," he said. "Your feeling that way." Ellis didn't need to hear the rest—the _it wasn't your fault_ and _there was nothing you could have done,_ because they were both capable of twisting those around in their head until they weren't true anymore, but even having only known him for a few weeks, himself, and long before Ellis had met him, long before he'd loved him… "You know that, don't you?"

Ellis shrugged. 

"He probably thought he was doing you a favour," Thomas said. He tried to sound gentle, but it wasn't the right thing to say—something he figured out as soon as the last word left his mouth.

He didn't react how he'd expected, though—no shock, no offense. He laughed. "That's if he thought about me at all."

"Don't be fucking daft, Dick, of course he did."

"You've just said you didn't know him well as me."

Thomas nodded. "I have, yes," he said slowly. 

The rest he didn't know how to put into words… because _he doesn't know,_ he realised, remembered, more like. _He doesn't know about what you did._

He'd never seen fit to tell him.

He'd have wanted to know, probably. But what was the point? It would only be embarrassing, besides.

Ellis rubbed at his jaw. "He can't have thought I'd be happy with it."

"No… but if he was so unhappy himself…" Thomas took a deep breath. The pressure in his throat wasn't helping. "He probably thought maybe he was making you unhappy, too."

That he'd be better off, with him gone, free to live his life without being weighed down by a useless good-for-nothing, free to have a future… that was what it felt like.

"I don't mean he thought you'd be glad about it," Thomas added. "But he probably—men like that— they don't see a way out for themselves, or they wouldn't do it, right, so he could've…" _Deep breath._ "Figured you'd get over it, eventually, and that you'd… be better off," he finished lamely. "Once he was gone."

"How could I possibly get over it?" Ellis said sharply. "How could I possibly be better off?"

"Because that's what you do when people die," replied Thomas, far more calmly than he felt. "You grieve a while and then someday you get over it, and that's that."

Ellis stared at him, looking more angry and more sad than Thomas had ever seen him, something wounded in his eyes. He sat back in his chair and took to gazing stolidly out the window, and Thomas said nothing, because he knew he shouldn't.

That sense had come with time.

"Still," Ellis murmured eventually, fiddling with a button on his shirt, still staring out toward the setting sun. "I don't know how a man can do a thing like that if he's got his mind on other people."

 _You've got it all wrong,_ Thomas thought, _you've got it all backward._

Sick rose up in his mouth.

"I don't know what I'd go so far as to call it selfish—"

"He was fucked in the head," Thomas interrupted sharply. "You don't poison yourself just cause you feel like it."

Ellis looked back at him blankly—it was as though he'd forgotten he was meant to have expressions on his face, and it was startling.

"Look," said Thomas, "I'm not gonna lie to you just to make you feel better."

"I wouldn't ask you to."

"Take it to heart or don't, but that's what I think."

Ellis nodded. 

For a long moment neither of them said anything. "I ought to get to bed," he said at last, just when Thomas was about to open his mouth, and then he stood.

He knew a change of subject when he heard one.

"Have you actually got any work to do before _Their Majesties_ arrive?"

"Have I actually got any work to do, he says," said Ellis, with half a grin. He was good at putting a mask on when he remembered to; that much was certain. "You wouldn't believe how much."

Thomas followed him into the corridor, where they stood awkwardly at his door. 

He managed to muster up some courage, even as his stomach was still churning: "I'm glad you're here," he managed to say. He took a breath, let his shoulders relax. Forced them to. "Could do with a friend around."

Suddenly it was like he was a whole new person—that smile came back to his eyes, his lips, and so Thomas had to manage the fucking butterflies on top of everything else.

"Thanks," said Ellis softly. "I feel the same." Thomas nodded but couldn't get any more words out. After waiting yet another long, taxing moment, Ellis nodded, and then he disappeared into the room and shut the door softly behind him.

And as soon as it was locked, as soon as he was certain he wasn't paying attention, Thomas went into the washroom and retched.

*

_We could have some fun, we could go into York…_

Ellis closed his book abruptly, and the sound brought Thomas out of his reverie. He blinked, realising he'd just read the same clue five times over. 

"I may understand now," Ellis said. 

"Understand what?"

_...I reckon it's about time, don't you?_

"Your feelings about Downton."

Thomas set his pen down and looked over at him.

"Seems to me after so many years they still can't make their minds up about you," he went on, rubbing his thumb forward and back on the page corners, "so I don't see how you can be expected to make your mind up about them."

 _About time we went into York,_ Thomas had joked, dripping with sarcasm but full of nerves, his heart racing.

_About time we went-together._

*

He should have known it was going to turn out this way.

Five, ten, fifteen minutes… even twenty, even thirty… _you shouldn't even have expected him til now,_ Thomas told himself. _You know what he's like; what did you think was gonna happen? It's got nothing to do with you…_

That argument stopped being convincing after an hour.

Even more so when the hour began to stretch on, and on, and on...

Well, if Ellis had lost interest, what was the harm in letting somebody else take some?

*

_Are you ever going to be allowed anything at all?_

It made sense that something like this would happen, really. Thomas could only recall one or two times they'd been together that hadn't started or ended with his utter humiliation.

But this was probably the worst of all, or up there with the worst, at least. And this would be the _one_ , he was certain, the one that made him realise he'd been hanging about for no reason for the last eleven years, that the idea of Thomas Barrow he had in his head was so far from what actually existed he may as well have been conjured up from nothing.

Wonderful. Bloody perfect, that he'd ruined the one chance he'd been given, and that—all eyes on him, after the warden called his name out—he was ruining them with the rest of fucking North Yorkshire into the bargain. 

How lucky he was that his one, single friend-or-something-like-it was in a high place. Not that he deserved it.

Ellis pulled the car over just before the turnoff for Downton.

*

"I've wanted you ages," Ellis breathed against his neck, and Thomas _shuddered,_ "God, I've wanted you for years."

He didn't know what to say to that, and in fact suspected he wouldn't do well in making any noises resembling words at the moment, so he set aside the idea of talking and instead tried just to _feel_ : feel his hand on his head and his lips now at his jaw and him between his thighs pushing forward and back, the friction of his body against his own, God, and they were doing this in a car in the middle of nowhere and it was so much but he'd _needed_ it, fuck; from his mouth came the sound "oh," and then again " _oh_ " and then over and over as his hands began to wander, and Ellis laughed, but kindly. Fondly, even.

"You like that?" he asked, his voice just _slightly_ deeper, slightly warmer. He had far too much control over his faculties for what he was doing to him, Thomas thought in the back of his mind, but the front of it was too busy melting into a puddle for the thought to stay.

"Yes," Thomas answered, arching his back, bending his knees. He didn't recognise himself, moaning the way he was, didn't recognise the feelings through his body. He reached blindly (when had he closed his eyes?) upward and caught him by the waist, prompting a small noise of surprise—small but enticing. Thomas spread his fingers underneath the band of his trousers, felt the warmth of his body against the palm of his hand. 

Ellis held him by the small of his back and kept his mouth to his skin, kept talking, but all of the words swirled around in his head unintelligible except a handful of very, very important ones, over and over like a prayer—ones Thomas had never expected to hear from anybody ever again.

*

Just before he'd started the car back in York he'd said, _Thomas Barrow, you just may be the bravest man I've ever met in my life._

 _I think you've got the wrong superlative, Richard Ellis._ By some miracle his voice hadn't shook.

 _Oh, there are a few others I could use,_ Ellis had told him, _but that one's the most important._

*

"So," Thomas asked. "What now?"

A pity they couldn't stay like this forever—in the back seat of a car that was neither-of-them's, with the roof down, summer sky overhead, curled up with each other such that if half of them weren't _his own_ he wouldn't have known whose limb was whose.

"I imagine we'll have to go back to Downton eventually."

"Say it isn't so, Mr Ellis…"

Ellis laughed. He kissed him on the cheek. "I wish you'd call me Dick," he said.

"I do," Thomas said.

"Not often enough for my liking."

*

He felt very childish, thinking the same words over and over in his head… but if he was going to fixate on something, there were certainly worse possibilities. "You loved Peter, though?" Thomas asked, after the silence had gone on for too long.

"Yeah," murmured Dick. He was tapping his fingers on Thomas's thigh in some pattern known only to him, but it didn't bother him… it was endearing, in fact. "Yeah, I did."

"Can somebody love two people at once?"

"Well, I should hope so." He paused. "For our sake."

It took Thomas a moment to realise what he was getting at, and that it had nothing to do with Peter Pelham—once he had, a very unwelcome feeling began to unfurl in his chest, faster than he knew how to manage. Something he hadn't felt in a while. " _Did_ he love _us_ , do you think?" he asked, more sarcastic than he'd been all evening, because sarcasm rolled easier off his tongue than anything else. "Or did he just—" 

"Well, I know he loved you."

Oh, _really._

Thomas pulled away, pushed himself off, his heart pounding. He stretched out his hand and then clenched his fingers into a fist, hard. He felt rushed; nothing-to-something had happened too fast and he didn't know _why._ "That's not funny," he snapped. "Dick, that's not funny."

He blinked. "I'm not joking."

"That's _fascinating,_ seeing as you spent the whole time you were around," (it had only been a few days but Thomas had never managed to wrap his head around them, to reconcile them with everything else, they cast too much of a shadow over it all) "telling me he never had – "

"I never said that," he interrupted.

"Yes, you did."

"No, Thomas – "

"It was fifteen years ago, how would you remember?"

"How would you?"

...well, Thomas couldn't argue with that.

Not logically, at least.

"I never said anything of the sort, not once," Dick told him, emphatic in a manner that made Thomas feel very small. Boxed in. "Don't put words in my mouth; you came up with that one all by yourself." _Breathe,_ he had to tell himself, _breathe, this has been over for so long and you got over it already, it's nothing it's nothing_ "All I had to do was ask you some questions, put a spin on it… Tell some stories."

_It's not nothing_

"That's worse," he said flatly.

"I don't see how."

"That's _worse,_ " repeated Thomas. Breathing was not fucking helping. "There's not much difference, but–"

Dick interrupted him again: "there's a world of difference," he said coolly.

"Explain it to me."

But he couldn't be bothered with that, of course. "We have very different memories of back then, don't we?" he said, as though that explained everything and solved it, too.

"I wonder _why!_ "

"I can understand how this would be upsetting, Thomas, but I was under the impression that–"

"Yes, it's upsetting," Thomas snapped, "I am _upset_ , 'cause I've spent the last fifteen years thinking something and you've decided just now to tell me I was wrong about it–"

"I'm hardly responsible for–"

"Dick, I swear if you finish that sentence–"

Luckily he had some sense and shut up.

Thomas didn't know what he was going to threaten him with, so it was lucky for both of them, really.

With both of them quiet, Thomas realised just how much he'd been raising his voice—and he realised he didn't actually care. Let somebody else cringe at him for a change; he was tired of it. And if it was going to be this then it was going to be this and it had already started so there was no going back. 

An owl called.

They both turned their heads toward the trees, as though it had been a person and not an animal they'd probably disturbed anyway… He was the second to turn back, but Dick wasn't looking at him; he had his head tilted up, toward the sky.

"How much was made up?" Thomas asked, careful to speak slowly, careful to keep his volume reasonable… he didn't know if he'd stay capable of it, after what had just happened. 

"As I said… any ideas what came out of it were yours," said Dick calmly, without altering his focus. And that was worse, too, like he wasn't even worth looking at. Like the stars held some answer to this and all he'd have to do was spot it. "And it was years and years ago, Thomas, I can't exactly give you a synopsis."

"But you did it on _purpose,_ you knew what you were doing – "

"Well, it wouldn't've worked if you hadn't been thinking it." 

Thomas stared at him. "Sorry?"

His face had gone blank, blank in an _upstairs_ way—none of the light Thomas had grown accustomed to was left in it. "You can't tease out what isn't there," he said, slow in a you-should-know-this-by-now sort of way. Thomas had forgotten what it sounded like, and he hated it even more now than the last time. "That's all it was."

"Is it, though?" (Nervous habit or not, now was a _very bad time_ for him to start doing up his buttons again—) "'Cause you just said you knew he had–"

"Well, yeah."

"So you knew _,_ " _that he loved me,_ "you knew the whole time, and you were _telling stories_ to make me think otherwise?"

He realised he'd been raising his voice again.

Dick didn't have anything to say to that, though he did seem shaken up… enough that he looked back to him, finally, but just to make eye contact that regardless of what it was meant to be felt threatening.

For once, Thomas didn't break first.

"You know," said Dick eventually, quiet, eyes on his sleeve as he unrolled it back over his forearm, on the folded-over cuff as he slipped his links through their holes one-handed and with practised ease and grace—seeing it reminded Thomas of the other thing they hadn't discussed, and everything from Monday evening (including the fucking nausea) came back, except where he'd been sympathetic then he was angry, now. "I hadn't realised you never grasped that part."

Well, if he hadn't been seething _before_...

"Oh, you hadn't _realised_!" Thomas exclaimed. "Dunno how I was meant to fucking grasp something you never bothered to tell me about, but now it all makes sense, you should've just said that earlier–" 

"We did discuss this." Finally he looked up at him again, though Thomas immediately wished he hadn't—Dick was just as capable of being sharp and cold as he was himself, no matter how easy it was to forget. He drew his knees up to his chest, instinctively. "In depth, might I add."

"We talked about the bloody letters, not– not–"

_Whatever the hell this is that you are telling me about now._

And then it dawned on him: "I didn't have _proof,_ " he said, spitting the words out of his mouth like blood after a knock in the jaw because that was what this fucking _felt like,_ "I didn't have any proof of him ever— I didn't have _anything._ "

"I know."

 _You could stand to sound sorrier,_ though he wasn't nearly so blasé as he'd been a moment ago.

"Do you?" asked Thomas. "I don't think you do."

Maybe one of the stupidest things he ever did was burn the one he had once he discovered what had happened to the rest. After he'd accepted that the person responsible for it was not somebody at Downton out to get him—which would have been better, he'd decided at the time, though he knew now that wasn't true.

Even if it hurt him now like the day it had happened. 

Then, he'd have had a few years trouble, in the other case, and this had sat rotting in the back of his heart for much, much longer.

"It wasn't as if I could go back and look at things and decide on it for myself."

"Yeah," Dick murmured. "Yeah, I know."

Like the flip of a switch.

"I'm sorry," he added.

"It's a little late for that one."

Just eleven years.

Minimum.

"I know." 

"I don't think you do."

"No," he said. "No, I do." He was back to being more interested in his shirtcuff than in looking Thomas in the eye. "I…"

"Spit it out."

 _Oh,_ Thomas thought when he brought his head up again, when he noticed the uneven lilt of his breath, the tension in his shoulders.

"Is it too late?" 

_Oh._

Thomas blinked. "I don't know," he answered, honestly. 

"More likely to be than not?"

"I don't know," Thomas said again.

He truly didn't, though now that the steam had burnt off he had an idea… especially now he was talking like this.

Dick nodded. He took up his driving gloves, and Thomas watched as he pulled one onto his hand and then tugged it over his fingers one by one. "I meant what I said, before."

_I've loved you for years._

"I know."

Another nod.

"So did I," Thomas added.

And he probably still did, though he supposed he was about to find out just how much.

*

"You know, I don't actually remember any of that conversation."

"It has been ten years."

"I didn't remember it a week after it happened, either… blow to the head and all. And I think they put me on morphine pills, til I made it to hospital..."

"Yes," Thomas said. "They did." He could remember parts of it like they happened yesterday and the rest hardly at all. "I was the one who had to make you swallow them."

Dick laughed. "Yeah."

He wondered if he should be worried about them waking up the chauffeur or something, but if they were going to do that, it probably would have happened already. 

"I do remember that morning," Dick added, soft. "Wish I didn't."

"Not just that morning for you, though, is it?"

He shook his head. "But wouldn't it be nice, if so…" He let Thomas pull his hand away, though he didn't look especially happy with it—and that satisfied the part of him that needed more than anything else to be _wanted_ , if only for a fleeting moment.

It satisfied something else, too… something he didn't fancy naming. Yesterday he'd have been bothered by the feeling; tonight it was vindicating. The only thing was he knew that doing anything at all like holding this over his head would ruin everything irreparably. There was no going back, from that. 

"Now I think of it I've got no way of knowing if it's as it happened or not," Dick continued. "They all run together, when it comes to it. Same as when I was in the thick of it."

There it was again.

Except that time he felt guilty.

Thomas put his gloves on and picked up his hat. "If we're going to talk about this," he said firmly, "here's a bad place."

*

"...I was almost as eager to please as you were," Dick said. Thomas couldn't be offended by it because it was true. 

"Better at hiding it, I'd bet."

"Not with _His Grace_..." He paused. "Especially not then, Christ."

Thomas glanced over at him. "He was good at that," he said. "Making you feel like you could share anything and everything, and all that, and it wouldn't matter."

_Just like you._

Dick didn't have much to say to that, probably because he was thinking the same thing as him. 

Or so he'd thought until he opened his mouth: "you know he loved you more than he did me."

_Obviously I didn't._

"What?"

"Yeah." He cleared his throat. "Yeah, it was very… motivating."

 _You do not want to go down this path,_ Thomas warned himself, _you do not want to start caring about this…_

But he said it anyway. "Then how come…?"

"I was the safe choice," Dick said. "That was all."

"Huh."

"We had a _servant-master_ relationship," he went on, too sardonic to have come up with it all by himself—and after thinking about it for a moment Thomas remembered why.

"We didn't," he said.

"And there lies the rub." 

Somehow they were able to laugh about it… but then it was as if laughing had put a stopper in everything else, and the following silence lasted until they made it to the kitchen courtyard.

Thomas blurted, "Dick, why the fuck do we still care about this?"

It made him laugh, though whether it was the question that had done it or the outburst was anybody's guess. 

"It's been fifteen _years,_ " Thomas added, as though they had not said so enough already for two hours, or however long it had been… it felt like ages and an instant all at the same time. "He's not even _alive anymore._ "

"I reckon that hurts more than it helps, actually," Dick said. "Makes it easier to think _what if,_ doesn't it."

Uncomfortable with the idea, Thomas shrugged.

"And I suspect we've both got different answers to that question," he continued. As they approached the backdoor he removed his hat—his hair shone. The fact that it was still put together after fucking sex was so typical of him it had reached the point of absurdity.

Thomas had been disheveled _before_ ; he was sure he was even worse now.

Not that Dick seemed to mind.

"What's yours?"

"Hm?"

"Why do you still remember it?"

He gave him a _look._

"...how, then?" Thomas tried, maybe being more pushy than he should have been, but he felt he was owed some of that, after everything. And it _was_ a different question. "When you were here valeting, I mean, 'cause you can't – I mean, just cause _I've_ spent all this time thinking about it – but I don't remember what _happened,_ exactly, just how it made me feel, so…"

He waited for him to finish, and then waited a bit longer.

Thomas opened up the backdoor.

"Well, it's easy, isn't it," Dick murmured. "To remember things you wish you could take back."

And that was exactly what Thomas had hoped he would say.

*

They had good intentions, of course: they talked about it first, in more detail than Thomas was even very comfortable with, and then they put the beds together as carefully and as quietly as they could, got cleaned up, started taking their clothes off— 

That part didn't get finished.

At the very least they made it to the bed— Thomas on his back with his legs open, palming Dick through his trousers as he knelt above him and feeling a thrill when he gasped, when he thrust toward his hand. Feeling powerful. 

And then Dick touched _him,_ so quickly and so faintly he could have missed it, and it sent something else through his body, made him realise how _desperate_ he was for this, how much he needed it, even after what had already happened and what they'd already shared and the things they'd said and when Dick pressed his thigh between his legs he rocked up against him, when he pinned his arm just above his head with one hand (something he wouldn't have claimed to like but that sent want curling through him) Thomas intertwined their fingers, pressed their palms together, and Dick wrapped his hand tight around his wrist ( _he never knew he liked this_ ) and stroked with his thumb and Thomas gasped into his mouth as they kissed and—

And by the time his brain caught up with what had happened it was too late to prevent the inevitable.

It all stopped at once.

When he dared open his eyes Dick was looking down at him with wide eyes and parted lips and fear all over his face, frozen.

Thomas yanked his hand back, pulling his sleeve down over his wrist after he'd done so.

"Mercy," Dick breathed. 

_Have some on me,_ Thomas thought.

*

In the morning they managed to do what they hadn't done the previous night—have each other, in a bed, as they were.

Thomas put his own clothes on but let Dick do his shirtcuffs.

*

"I know we've left it half-done," Dick said quietly. He turned his head just to look out the open door (but Thomas was sure they were only the ones left downstairs) and then back, his focus intense as always… but Thomas didn't feel so much like he was being seen-through, this time. Didn't feel like he was being cut open. "But you understand, don't you?"

Well, if it had taken this long already to dig it all up, they could probably get away with taking some more time for themselves before burying it for good…

"Because I wouldn't want you to feel cheated."

"I don't," Thomas said. The remark earned him the typical raised eyebrows. "I might start," he added, "if you go back on your word, but I don't now."

"If you're sure."

"I am."

Dick nodded. "You'll see me again, then?" he asked. He really was so sweet when he was nervous. After another long moment of standing stiff in one place he looked out the door again, cautious and conscious like always. 

And by the time he'd turned back around Thomas had grown tired of waiting for him, like always… 

"Of course I will," he murmured as they broke their kiss, caressing his cheekbone, overwhelmed by the affection in his eyes, dizzy in it, "what do you take me for?"

*

The nice thing about a keychain, Thomas decided, was it couldn't be easily burnt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for joining me on this rollercoaster of a writing exercise
> 
> potential for an epilogue but we'll see what happens................ i have lots of fic that was supposed to be published this month that hasn't been

**Author's Note:**

> [find me on tumblr as @combeferre](https://combeferre.tumblr.com)


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